Born July 12, 1857, ceramic artist George E. Ohr called himself “The Mad Potter of Biloxi.” Working in a style of abstract expressionism, Ohr called his pieces his “mud babies” and claimed that 20,000 were produced on the wheel in his Pot‑Ohr‑E studio.
Ohr was ahead of his time, shaping clay into impossibly thin, twisted, and crumpled forms that the public largely dismissed as eccentricities. Heartbroken by the lack of appreciation but confident in his genius, he packed up his thousands of pots and stored them away, declaring that the world would not understand his work for another century.
His prediction came true when the vast collection was rediscovered decades after his death. Today, his wild, folded clay structures are celebrated as masterpieces of American art.
Image by Robert Brooks via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
